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In the north wing the walls are standing somewhat higher, but do not indicate more than three stories, though there was probably another. The vigas of the second floor project through the wall for a distance of about five feet along its whole northern face, the same as in the Pueblo Hungo Pavie.
Once inside, the ceilings are high, timbered with vigas of cedar strengthened by heavier logs that must have been carried in a horseless age a hundred miles from the mountains. The house is laid out on rectangular lines, and the halls straight enough but so narrow as to compel passage sidewise. In every room is a feature that has puzzled scientists both here and in the cave dwellings.
From Encero to the small Indian village of Las Vigas, there are 7500 toises of horizontal distance; and Encero being, according to my barometric measurement, 746 toises lower than Las Vigas, the result, for the mean slope, is only an angle of 5 degrees 40 minutes.
To this, the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe is the one and complete exception in America. It flanks the cottonwoods of the Plaza, yellow adobe in the sunlight very old, very sleepy, very remote from latter-day life, but with a quaint, quiet atmosphere that travelers scour Europe to find. Look up to the vigas, or beams of the ceiling, yellowed and browned and mellowed with age.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Semana Santa have only this to distinguish them from ordinary days, that the churches are crowded with men and women waiting their turn at the confessional; and that in the afternoons the old promenade of Las Vigas, down in the Indian quarter by the canal of Chalco, is patronized by fashionable Mexico, which, except on some four or five special days, frequents the new Alameda.
I wonder that our new faculty of pulque-drinking did not make us able to relish the suspicious eggs that abound in Mexican inns, but it had no such effect, unfortunately. Our canoe took us back to the Promenade of Las Vigas, which is a long drive, planted with rows of trees, and extends along the last mile or two of the canal.
Those vigas have witnessed strange figures stalking the spacious halls below. If the ceiling beams could throw their memories on some moving picture screen, there would be such a panorama of varied personages as no other palace in the world has witnessed.
This Santa Anita is a little Indian village on the canal of Chalco, and to-day there is to be a festival there. For this, however, we shall be too early, as we have to be back in time to see Mexico turn out for a promenade on the Paseo de las Vigas, and then to go out to dinner.
Many, of the vigas are still in place, and are large and perfectly smooth and straight undressed logs of pine, averaging ten inches in thickness; none of the smaller beams or other wood-work now remains. There is one estufa thirty-seven feet in diameter in this wing.
By the time we had got to the Paseo de las Vigas we were glad enough to get out, wondering at the sacrifice of comfort to dignity those highly respectable grandees must have made, and not surprised at the fate of some inquisitive travellers who have done as we did, and have been obliged to stop by the qualms of sea-sickness. At the bridge we chartered a canoe to Santa Anita.
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